"A fascinating scientific and personal exploration of the roots of evil, filled with human insight and telling detail."-Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor, Harvard University, and author of The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, and The Stuff of Thought

"A highly-readable, entertaining, ground-breaking, must-read study with notable insights on the rise and fall of empires; but more importantly, it offers, perhaps for the first time, a distinctly plausible mechanism for explaining the origin and persistence of social inequality."-Glenn Storey, President, Archeological Institute of America, Iowa Society, Associate Professor of Classics and Anthropology, University of Iowa, and author of Urbanism in the Preindustrial World: Cross-Cultural Approaches

"Remarkable -- and difficult to put down ... a wonderfully readable tapestry of family autobiography, historical biography, and biological psychology. Without oversimplifying their psychosocial complexity, Evil Genes explores new research on the genetics and neurobiology of personality disorders. Shining this light on some of the most problematic figures of our era, it challenges our assumptions about the roots of terrorism, genocide, crime, corruption--and even the sinister sides of politics, business, and religion."-Terrence W Deacon, Professor of Biological Anthropology and Neuroscience, University of California, Berkeley, and author of The Symbolic Species

"Einstein once said that all important new science would be found at the interstices of existing disciplines; if you need proof of that, this book is it. Starting with a background in the military, linguistics and electrical engineering, Oakley deftly moves through psychology, functional brain imagery and molecular biology to weave a compelling and provocative case for a genetic base for evil. 'Scientific non-fiction' and 'page turner' aren't two phrases I'd expect in the same sentence, but for the remarkable Evil Genes, they fit."-William A. Wulf, President Emeritus, National Academy of Engineering. [Barbara Oakley, Ph.D., P.E] [Mark Godsey]